Monday, August 25, 2014

Making Sense of Beliefs

What do you believe?There is a
God?No god?How about a God who sacrificed His Son for
the benefit of mankind or, childless, send a final prophet with blueprints for
how people are supposed to live?

Something
else?

There are so
many choices: religions with no gods or with thousands of them.

Why would
anyone believe any of these claims?People obviously do.In fact,
they’ll willingly kill someone who attacks their faith and, in some cases, will
eagerly try to impose their belief on everyone else.They’ll even faithfully deny clear, contrary
scientific and historical evidence in order to hold onto their faith.

Sunrise

There are
several reasons for such obstinate behavior:

To begin
with, humans like answers.Why does the
sun rise in the East?Why is the sky
blue?You name it, we want to know.Science has found many of the answers,
including the orbit of our planet around the Sun, and the way that colors are
perceived.We know the origin of
lightning and thunder, how life began and a lot more.

Some things
we will never know, such as what happens after death, is there a soul, does sin
really exist?For those puzzlers, we
invent answers.Those answers take on a
special quality because they are our answers, as opposed to answers provided by
someone else.

Early family

That’s
because humans evolved in small family groups.In order to survive, we developed the ability to go along with the
family.Lone humans, not blessed with
fangs or sharp claws, had little chance to survive away from the clan.

Of course,
our answers to the unanswerable questions then became dogma in contrast with
answers provided by other human families.

That dichotomy
continues today, just on a larger scale.Religions are bigger and radiate worldwide; so are families that
espouse one belief ahead of another.

Bathing in the Ganges

In addition,
those answers provide a helpful framework in a very confusing world.Many
people need that.If they follow these
guidelines – fast 30 days in a row, eat the body and blood of a god, bathe in
the polluted Ganges River and so on – all will be well. How easy.How simple.The rest of reality becomes a blur of meaningless noise.

Another
reason has to do with how we treat people who provide our answers.Our religious representatives supposedly have
some special knowledge or contact with a higher authority.As a result, people longing for such ego-stroking happily join the accepted religion and strongly support its views.Their social standing and self-esteem depend
on that.

Pryce

In contrast,
an imam carries no status in a community that does not recognize the Muslim
faith.That’s equally true for a pope,
who could be mistaken for actor Jonathan Pryce while touring a non-Catholic locale.

Francis

In addition,
there’s something called plausibility.People believe because the accepted paradigm is not completely
plausible. That’s why the Da Vinci Code, a novel with no basis in
fact, attracted so many people who find the Christian historical claims
difficult to swallow.

In another
example, I was recently reading where some conspiratorial theorists are insisting
9/11 was an “inside” job.That’s despite
all the evidence that the attacks were plotted by a small group of Islamic
terrorists then in Pakistan.Why?Because the theorists don’t trust the
government and prefer to accept an outlandish, alternative theory that seems
more “plausible.”

Kennedy with his wife

The same
process is involved with hard-core believers who tout alternative assassins of President
John Kennedy.

Both
conspiracies collapse when you realize that, for the theories to be accurate,
they must have included thousands of people, an impossibility for any
conspiracy.

Unfortunately,
such facts won’t puncture beliefs.That’s
understandable since beliefs come with such emotional links to both our past
and our present.To deny them would be
to reject ourselves, something only the few with strong identities can endure.

People who
finally recognize that what they believe simply can’t be true often find
themselves foundering emotionally and psychologically.As one ex-Mormon leader noted that, when he
finally understood that Church teachings were inaccurate, he felt as though he
had been “kicked in the stomach.”Months
late, he still could not decide what he believed.

For most
others, even as reality closes in, they continue to believe.They often adopt an attitude that one friend
who became an Orthodox Jew told me: “I made up my mind.Don’t bother me with the facts.”

That’s
belief’s greatest asset: no facts required.

Long-time religious historian Bill
Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history. He also
speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida. You can
reach him at www.williamplazarus.com.
He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The
Last Testament of Simon Peter; The
Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas
Carols;and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion. His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores
and via various publishers. He can also be followed on Twitter.

About Me

During his career, Bill has been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, advertising copywriter and writer/editor of NASCAR programs, among other jobs. He has won three international awards for stories and programs while working for International Speedway Corp. and was named 2000 Florida Feature Writer of the Year.
He has published four books to date and his writing has appeared in hundreds of local, regional, state and national publications.